Deep in a Valley to the North of Elvaria, Willow, the servant of the drunkard Duke Witherspoon, was framed for his murder. She was forced to run away and face the dangers of the outside world, unknown to her. Her innocence will be tested and new friends and enemies will be made along the way. Is everything as it seems, or is there something more to be discovered?
The night was young. Willow gazed out at the plain canvas called the sky, waiting for the lavish colors to fill up the empty canvas until all that was left was a dark, diamond-dotted scene. She sat in her quarters bored, biting her lip as she grew more and more impatient. "Agatha said Witherspoon wanted me now," she sighed, drumming her hands on the side of her wooden chair. Willow was 16 years old. Ever since she could remember she had lived in the Witherspoon manor, contained in its four walls. It was a towering gothic building with large surrounding gardens, hedges cut into the shapes of animals, and large marble fountains. A tall wall surrounded the castle, overgrown and covered in Ivy. Willow wasn't sure how duke Witherspoon had become a duke in the first place, but she knew it was through marriage because he could never have been royalty due to his boisterous nature and alcohol addiction. She knew he had some sort of connection to the kingdom of Mastand. Murals of battles fought and won between Mastand and other foreign countries lined the hallways, partly proving her suspicion. The five districts, more commonly known as the five kingdoms, were the kingdoms that made up the land, they were Cadmain, Elvaria, Gengheim, Mastand and Caram. Some were powerful and proud whilst others were cowardly and sly. Mastand, the Duke's home kingdom, was one of the cowardly, sly realms. It was a large kingdom, built on the backs of cheats and liars, its foundations laid down by the bloodied hands of traitors. It was a forest kingdom, miles away from the sea. Witherspoon now lived in a different district, the kingdom of Elvaria, a strong, compassionate, and kind kingdom. Willow's home was underpopulated and dull. Most of her childhood was spent alone, under the sharp eye of her Master, Duke Witherspoon. He was a broken man who lived on a large plot of land a mile outside of a dirty peasant village. He had a strange collection of stuffed dead creatures and claimed that he was the best, most accomplished taxidermist in the modern era. Sometimes when Willow was sent into his gutting and stuffing room (a large room with no windows and one small light dangling from the ceiling) to clean the blood and guts off of the walls and floor, she would take one look at the large wooden doors and the brass handles and decide that any punishment would be better than exposing herself to the horrors that laid beyond the doors. The reason for this was not the blood splattered over the walls or the carving knives and tools, it was not the smell of rotting flesh or even the creepy eeriness, It was because of the spirits of the dead animals that Willow was sure existed. She was told stories of ghouls howling in the dead of night and believed that it was the spirits of the dead animals that had been used for the dukes strange hobby. For the duke, taxidermy wasn't only an obsession, it was a lifestyle. Witherspoon loved seeing animals die and suffer. The mad man would take one look at a stray dog and say in his rather raspy, unpleasant voice, "If I had my firearm with me, that dog's brains would be sprayed all over the floor." He would then proceed to holler and grunt as if his "joke" was funny. He was a rude man and a long-term alcoholic. He was rather grotesque and dull. He had spindly greying hair and a potbelly. He carried around the stench of whiskey, cigars, and a sort of suspicious old paper musk. He never did care much of what others thought of him, he would wobble around drunk in the village or speak words of idiocy to the villagers. Not much was known about him or his past life, only that it was so agonizing that he repeatedly tried committing suicide and drank to drown his sorrows, he was never sober and never satisfied.
Just as Wetherspoons past was a mystery, Willows was too. Little was known about her parents or how she ended up at the Witherspoon mansion. Some say that she was the victim of a kidnapping, others would say that Willow's parents delivered her to the door and disappeared into the night, not a trace of their identity left behind, but Willow didn't know what to believe.
